Sponsored Post Three tips to enhance chick gut health

[DBCAgProducts]

Hi EggSighted4Life,

Thank you for your comments and questions - our apologies for not responding sooner! We appreciate your feedback and your shared goal in helping to keep backyard birds healthy.

It might help to provide more information about ourselves and what we do every day at DBC Ag Products. Our history is rich in strategically combining novel ingredients into proprietary formulas that help keep millions of chicks, pullets and hens protected from digestive disease pathogens that can be harmful to birds. We love what we do and helping poultry raisers support their birds!
Your original post included several points and we will try to answer them here:

Study on daily use: Numerous experts, veterinarians and academicians don’t recommend administering vitamin or electrolyte supplements for more than 10 days. Based on that knowledge, the products in the Backyard Chicken

Health Pack do not contain vitamins or electrolytes. Our product contains targeted proteins, beneficial bacteria, prebiotics and enzymes designed to focus specifically on helping improve the intestinal health of your flock and reduce the chance that pathogens can cause your birds harm.
Sanitizing water: We agree - management is a very important factor to help avoid disease and maintain a healthy flock. The reason to sanitize drinking water is because 1) not everyone pulls water from a potable source and 2) one sick bird in the flock can infect the rest of the flock simply by contaminating the waterers. The use of Oxy E-100 or other disinfectants/sanitizers in the water along with good waterer cleaning is an effective way of controlling or reducing the chance of infection, from the water source or from the birds. In all cases, we recommend testing your water source to determine if that is the source of potential infection.

Human health: One of the reasons we created the Backyard Chicken

Health Pack is for human health. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2016 there were almost 900 cases of Salmonella in humans attributed to backyard poultry raising.2 Shedding of disease causing organisms into the environment can increase the chance of infection. Targeting Salmonella with supplement programs can help support the immune system of birds and reduce shedding into the environment– aiding the goal of keeping your flock and family healthy.1

Dewormer resistance: There are concerns about synthetic dewormers on the market worms are developing resistance to. Zyfend

A takes a different approach. It naturally targets the defenses of worms and worm eggs. It works by helping break down the natural defenses of intestinal worms and their eggs. This makes worms more susceptible to attack by the bird’s immune system, stomach acids and bacteria in the gut. After over five years of use following our label directions, customers continue to use Zyfend

A to successfully offset the negative impacts of worms in their birds.

The Backyard Chicken

Health Pack products are being used every day in millions of birds, including commercial, organic-certified and natural-certified laying flock locations. It is our passion to make these same product formulas available to backyard growers and help keep your goal to raise healthy, wholesome food for your family too!
We hope this answered your questions, EggSighted4life, and provided a bit more information about our product and goals. Please let us know if you have any additional questions or concerns. We appreciate your feedback and are happy to discuss further.

References
1 Yegani, M., & Korver, D. R. (2008). Factors Affecting Intestinal Health in Poultry. Poultry Science, 87(10), 2052-2063. doi:10.3382/ps.2008-00091
2 CDC. (2016). Eight multistate outbreaks of human Salmonella infections linked to live poultry in backyard flocks (final update). Retrieved January 27, 2017, from https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/live-poultry-05-16/index.html

 

[Carolei]

Can you tell me if it is okay to use Zyfend A in a nipple watering system? Does the Zyfend A interact with the metal of the nipples?

 

[Fairview01]

Imo, I think one of the best ways to naturally improve the gut health of our chickens is to make a portion of their diet whole grain. The path between the gizzard and the stomach is a 2 way street. Contents from the gizzard flow to the stomach but the stomach can regurgitate food back into the gizzard for further pre digestion. Scratch should consist of equal parts of cracked corn, rolled oats and wheat. Start them off slowly the first couple weeks and make sure there there is plenty of grit available. You don't have to buy expensive granite from TSC either. A cheap bag of pea gravel from HD is more than adequate or a spade full of fine gravel from your driveway also works.

The stronger the gizzard the better the feed is pre-digested before reaching the stomach which could result in better feed conversion. Since I've started including scratch as part of their daily diet the two noticeable differences I've seen is that the droppings are firmer and more consistent in appearance and I think (unscientifically of course) a better growth rate in the pullets I have. The only thing I could begin to attribute that to is the increased activity searching for a limited amount of scratch enhances their appetite so they eat a bit more mash, or being unprocessed the whole grains hold more nutritional value than mash.

 

[DBCAgProducts]

Can you tell me if it is okay to use Zyfend A in a nipple watering system? Does the Zyfend A interact with the metal of the nipples?

Since Zyfend A is an all-natural product designed to target worms, there are no ingredients that will cause any issues with any metals found in nipple water systems. As with all watering systems, it is important to clean them regularly to remove any natural biofilm build up, sanitize to reduce bacteria, virus and protozoa contamination (Oxy E-100 works very well for this) and ensure they are working properly so that your birds get the water and health support they need.

 

[casportpony]

The path between the gizzard and the stomach is a 2 way street. Contents from the gizzard flow to the stomach but the stomach can regurgitate food back into the gizzard for further pre digestion.

As I understand the digestive tract, food is stored in the crop, then into the proventriculas (stomach) where digestive juices are added, then into the gizzard where it's ground up and passed into the intestines.

More on the digestive system here:
http://articles.extension.org/pages/65376/avian-digestive-system (warning, contains some graphic pictures).